Glass Façade and Structure Movements

Abstract

For designing and constructing a glazing façade the analysis of the foreseeing structural movements must be considered from the first steps of the project. This basic assessment could become quite complicate for those projects where large displacement are expected or just for projects where the design intent would not allow to use standard solutions. Frequently, when working with large glass units, the movement issue must be analysed in detail. The purpose of the presentation would be introducing different approaches to be considered when developing a glass façade concept. Which are the most important live loads, how it would be possible to set out the façade elements for anticipating structural movements, how to create sliding supports or how to introduce customed expansion joints in grazed façades. Real projects would be presented as example of different possible situations, the aim is introducing the basic concept but focusing in real cases studies, this would be interesting to fix the ideas. At the same time those examples show that dealing with this issue could also be quite complicate with a standard project or with quite small glazing units.